Taxable Talk

Ronald Reagan said, “Facts are stupid things.” Well, one fact that I’ve mentioned in the past is that IRS Criminal Investigations looks at all allegations of employment tax fraud. The reason is obvious: The IRS doesn’t like the idea of people stealing from them. I’ve been saying this for the ten-plus years that I’ve been writing this blog.

Andrew Parish of Chillicothe, Ohio apparently doesn’t read this blog, and also apparently didn’t consider how his scheme would fail. Mr. Parish hired a firm to prepare his payroll and send the reports to the IRS and Ohio–all well and good so far. He then decided to issue paychecks directly. That wouldn’t have been an issue if Mr. Parish had told his payroll company. I’m sure you’re a couple steps ahead of me: He didn’t, nor did he issue his own payroll reports. But he did include the withholding on the paychecks.

The employees naturally included this withholding on their tax returns. That withholding wasn’t going to match IRS records, and sooner or later the IRS was going to investigate. When the amount missing matched the amount of those paychecks, it wasn’t going to take a genius to figure out where the error occurred.

(An interesting digression: This past April one of my clients received an IRS notice because the withholding on his return didn’t match IRS records. I looked at the W-2’s (my client had multiple employers) and they matched perfectly. It turns out that the error is exactly the amount of the withholding from one employer, and that money apparently hasn’t made it to the IRS. My client is a pack-rat, and had all of his paychecks and his W-2’s, and everything tied perfectly. The IRS requested a copy of those records; it is a near certainty that IRS Criminal Investigations is looking into this. But I digress….)

As for Mr. Parish, he pleaded guilty earlier this year to failing to account for and pay over employment taxes to the IRS. He was sentenced to 18 months at ClubFed and must make restitution of $341,336. A helpful hint to those thinking of not remitting employment taxes: This had a zero percent chance of success in 2005 and the odds haven’t improved in the last ten years.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2015 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Payroll Taxes, Tax Evasion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.